Specter's role in the passage of the detainee bill disputed

[nam78_two]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101501123.html?nav=hcmodule

The news reached Democrats working on the military commissions bill in the Senate cloakroom the morning of Sept. 27. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a sponsor of two amendments giving detainees a right to challenge their detention or treatment in federal court, had decided to bring the more extreme amendment to a vote.

Democrats had lined up behind Specter because the Judiciary Committee chairman told them he shared their antipathy to language in the bill stripping detainees of habeas corpus rights. But the amendment Specter put forward was defeated 51 to 48, allowing the bill to win congressional approval without change. It handed the White House an important pre-election victory.

The last-minute maneuvering before the Sept. 28 vote remains a hot topic of debate among lobbyists, lawmakers and staff members. They are wondering if Specter, as several Judiciary Committee staff members privately asserted at the time, was pressured into discarding a less extreme and more politically palatable amendment at the Bush administration's request, in favor of an alternative more likely to be defeated.

Specter says that he was not, and that he has no reason to believe the less extreme alternative he sponsored but withheld from a vote -- allowing detainees limited access to the courts -- might have won. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) backs Specter's account, but some other sources on Capitol Hill dispute it.

The stakes were considerable: The White House had been waging an intense three-month effort, set off by an adverse Supreme Court decision in June, to win explicit congressional support for the right to detain indefinitely, and without guaranteed recourse to the courts, people -- including U.S. citizens -- who are designated as "unlawful enemy combatants."

[Eric J in MN]

1. If we take back the House and pick up Senate seats...

...we should have another vote on all the amendments to make the "Military Commissions Act" (The Torture Bill) less awful.

[nam78_two]

2. Indeed

And really, pretty much all the legislation the nut-bags have brought in ....

[Nite Owl]

3. They could pass it but

they won't have the votes to overcome a veto.